Sunday, September 30, 2007

084 - I'm So Sick: The Making Of

Let's start from the beginning once again :)

Few weeks ago, I got my hands on the soundtrack for the latest Resident Evil movie, "Resident Evil: Extinction". While the soundtrack was mostly full of shitty screamo, two tracks stood out there a lot: "My World" by Emigrate and this "I'm So Sick (T-Virus remix) by Flyleaf vs The Legion Of Doom.

Originally I wanted to make a video to "My World" using the traditional line-up of L70ETC but then "I'm So Sick" started to play in my head too :)

While ISS is not so metal-ish as "My World" it provided a cool challenge: a female singer. I did not even have to look very far for that singer, my soon-to-be twink rogue had the looks.

So I remade the belf in WoW model viewer with rock-credibility in mind. She had to look like a singstress for a rock/metal band and imho I succeeded quite well. It is yet to be seen what the big crowd thinks about her and the music video..

Making her to sync with the music required sometimes a bit of trickery. Playing an animation backwards worked a lot better in some cases.

And now a tip for people planning to do their own music video: there is no point trying to sync a singing animation to a long sentence. Instead, try to sync the singers animation to words. It needs more angles and work, but in the end it looks better.

Oh snap, she does not even have a name. If someone comes up with a name which has a) something rock-credibly and b) something blood-elfish - spank it in the comments! Kthxbai :D

Onto the editing next. I approached this video from the Unlimited Escapism perspective: IT HAS TO LOOK COOL. In order to do that the video needs some rock'n'roll clichés: explosions, raining, speed (not the drug), fire, playing and singing in dangerous places etc.

From the beginning I decide that I wanted to use model changes as well. Finally the works of Snoman, Dopefish and Lev are used as an actual stage for machinima.

I tried to make it so that all of the band members have an equal amount of screen-time, in terms of the song. But as you can hear, the majority of the song is played with the bass/drums/vocals combinations so there is not that much room for the guitarists to show. This is something I intend to fix in my next L70ETC video - whenever that will be.

While making the video, I learned to do some new and cool things in various programs. I now know how to load new emitters and how to keyframe in Particle Illusion 3. I have come to terms with the masking tool of Vegas (though it sometimes is a bit clumsy). With the masking tool I managed to create one of the coolest effects - a fake Depth of Field, just like in the image below:

As you can see (click the image bigger and look closer ;) the objects that are far look blurred and those close to the camera are clearer.

I have no idea what the next L70ETC music video by me will be, but most likely it will be to a song by Ministry, Turbonegro or Turmion Kätilöt (Finnish band).

If you survived this TLDR critical strike, relax yourself with some links (and an exceptionally shitty YouTube stream):

083 - Done!

Saturday, September 29, 2007

082 - Like, stuff, you know.

There you go - the song title and the artist for the untitled music video. It is very likely (97.69%) that the final video will be called "I'm So Sick" as well.

The release date is more closer than farther, just a few more seconds to edit. But those final seconds just happen to be quite hard to machinimate (out of cool ideas at this moment for the missing scenes).

Once again - let some new screenies talk for themselves:

Those are meteors in the background! Particle Illusion just kicks ass. No more making stupid looking rain effects with Photoshop.

In-game shot, filmed in My Burning Valentine :)

As much as I hate the IRL-winter, I do love snowy zones in games.

The fake Depth of Field effect in action - all done in Sony Vegas.

It was so great when I realized how to load other emitter libraries in PI3 - Snoman's Darnzhara has even more leaves falling (through video editing only).

Last but not least - a few words about Unlimited Escapism vol. 0: Shock Your Senses. The movie itself is now 95% complete: I need to record & edit one scene plus replace some of the older ones (need better explosions!). As one of my ideas was to have hand-drawn stuff in the movie, it has also caused some delays. The other artists are busy people, but good things come slowly and surely :)

A second trailer of UEv0 will be released when I'm 99.97 sure about the release date of the movie.

If you haven't done so already - congratulate Olibith! 'Cause he won some prizes and all :)

But wait -there's more!

Khandy made a cool sequel / homage to Never Stay Tuned! Watch Never Stay Tuned 2.5 at the other end of this link.

p.s.

A late night early morning update: I am sleeping, but don't tell anyone that I'm here writing this. I just wanted to let you know that release candidate #1 of "I'm So Sick" started rendering just now.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

080 - Nub-Blog Special #2: Nethervale

I had no intentions to make or release a new movie this weekend, but seems that fate decided otherwise :)

A guy who goes by the name Lev sent me a private message via the Myndflame forums. It was about his model change called Nethervale which he really wanted me to use something to. And here we go - one of the most craziest and psychedelic model changes I have ever seen.

Once more a big thanks to Lev for sending me this! :)

Nethervale is a mixture of Netherstorm and Stranglethorn Vale.

But wait, there's more! Some people say that these movies do not have a story, so let me make one up:

"After a long day of music video shooting, that girl from the yet untitled music video walked around Booty Bay.

In one shopping corner of the city,she saw a gnome with a purple turban.She asked the gnome: 'What are you selling?'.The gnome did not reply, but instead pointed to a piece of paper which said: 'One mushroom 50 msk, Two mushroom 75 msk.'

The girl thought it about a bit, and bought three mushrooms. She ate the mushrooms and got the most best trip of her life.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

079 - BioCraft: Big Daddy & Little Sister

Texturing action! WoW meets Bioshock once again, this time in-game.

I am quite happy how the little sister turned out, very Bioshockish. I did two versions of the big daddy, the latter one will most likely the one I'll use on the movies.There they are, in the music video :) My plans are to make some non-modelviewed in-game shots about the duo as well.

And finally two pics pic of the original Bioshock (featuring Daddy & Sis), for those who do not get the things mentioned above:

Friday, September 21, 2007

078 - A bunch of pics and some text

This sure is one damn interesting video to make (in the terms of learning new stuff etc). The creation itself gives some nice challenges - to sync the vocalist into the music (the regular models have limited animations) and to sync the band itself to the music.

A large percentage of the song is mostly bass and drums + vocals. There are parts when the whole thing "explodes" and the electric guitars come in so more members of L70 ETC can be shown.

Most of the video will be WoWmodelviewed and chromakeyed footage. But I am going to add some in-game shots too, just like the one below:

There will also be scenes where the entire band is playing together. They are the most time-consuming to make, especially when there is room for every member to have a shadow. A waste of time someone might say, since those shadows are always not that visible on the end result.The visual style on this video is very important. As it is a rock/metal video the happy and shiny natural colors of WoW do not fit there without some additional colourization. The rock'n'toll credibility factor, you know :)

Today I did my first composition in After Effects, yay! No, I will not be putting a picture of that here (it just looks so stupid without motion). It is intentional that I have not yet publically announced the original performer and the title of the song.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

077 - You didn't see me here!

..'cause I'm supposed to be in bed, sleeping and disturbing my neighbours with horrendous snoring. But let's not tell anyone that I have done some editing for the still untitled music video. Just a little big secret between us mmkay?

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

076 - Previews & Answers

Two more previews from the work-in-progress music video, showing more of the guest singer of L70ETC:

Someone asked / suggested in the blog comments that I should make a full episode of PlurTV. Currently I have no plans for that, since filming RL footage with a basic digital camera sucks and I'm outta ideas for that. But Daisy & Plur will definitely make more appearances in the future.

Monday, September 17, 2007

075 - Before & Afer II

Started a new project today, a music video.

In addition to that I learned a cool new trick in Vegas once again. Depth of field is the name of the game! It means that some things that are near look less blurred and others that are far (from the camera) are more blurred.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

073 - Sunday Break: A My Burning Valentine Tribute

And it is out :D

This one indeed was a dream come true. The original My Burning Valentine rocked my socks back then and it is really great to be able to film it "again". I already have implanted some MBV scenes to Unlimited Escapism vol. 0: Shock Your Senses and I intend to use this in a music video (which is only an idea in my head atm).

One of the coolest things when filming Sunday Break was the nice Sin City-ish glitch. I really hope that someone figures out how to reproduce it for even more machinima craziness :)

Last but not least, some links to in-game pictures taken while filming:

072 - Coming Soon.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

071 - Floating

The end is getting closer and closer, so it's once again time for one more preview pic (from the end credits). This has one has a pretty nice effect which tries to make things look that they are partially under water. It is also quite a simple trick - just layer smacking and masking.

I am gonna write a little tutorial about this when I get UEv0:SYS out of the way.

After escaping the UEscapism, my next work will be Snoman Remixed 3.

But the problem is that I don't know if it will be called Snoman Remixed 3. Because of the fact that I might use metal/rock as a soundtrack (I found a very very very addictive and energetic song) and it will be more music-videolike.

Plus there are a couple of top secret projects going on. No need to tell anything about them until there is something to tell ;)

update:

A new and improved version! Now there is a reflection on the water (it should be more noticeable in motion). I also changed the colourization a bit.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

070 - Nub-Blog Special #01: Sunken Stormwind

So, in order to tease you all considering Unlimited Escapism volume zero: Shock Your Senses, I'll start a little spin-off series to all of my machinimas.

The Nub-Blog specials will be anything about everything (from shitty PvP to insane raids or retarded private server stuff).

Mostly WoW and machinima related, but there is no limit on the contents. I will try to keep the videos short, a maximum of three minutes is the goal. Trying is one thing, succeeding another.

These videos have no planned release schedules and they will be only published on this blog.

This first episode is about "Sunken Stormwind", a model change made by Snoman for UEv0: SYS.

As I just got the model change running (I had to install an older private server), I did some recordings. Unfortunately UEv0: SYS is so full, that there will be room for about 10 to 15 seconds maximum for Sunken Stormwind.

Needless to say that the quality on the YouTube stream blows, so please use the Stage6 alternative if possible. Or download it if the idea of streaming is hideous to you :P

The textures of the (wooden) buildings were changed to look like that they had been underwater for a while. Trees went through a change as well to give something even more underwaterish there. One of the coolest things in the model change is the Shattrath light which replaced the fountain statues.

Friday, September 7, 2007

069 - This Is A Topic

Post #69! I thought I'd put something pervy and booby here but nah, I'll leave all that for you to see when UEv0:SYS is released.

Instead here comes another preview piccie. The actual scene took quite a while to make, it had many many layers and some of that 3d rotation stuff. The scene lasts about 5 seconds and it took about 30 minutes to render.

A small challenge: count the game engines used on the picture :)

This picture will be one of the last preview pictures I am releasing. The movie is now very near being complete, but the completion is not yet near. Like Olibith says.. slowly towards the end!